Helia Samani

Helia Samani is an AIxBio Policy Advisor at the Simon Institute for Longterm Governance (SI), working on biosecurity policy and international cooperation to reduce biological risks from advanced AI.

Previously at the Nuclear Threat Initiative, Helia helped establish and led an international working group to develop shared approaches to comparing and interpreting biological capability evaluations of AI systems. She also supported U.S.-China Track II biosecurity dialogues and led the development of a biosafety and biosecurity review framework for AI-enabled biological design, engineering, and automation.

Earlier, as a Policy Fellow at the National Security Commission on Emerging Biotechnology, she conducted research and analysis on biosecurity oversight, biomanufacturing, and supply-chain resilience. Her policy work is grounded in research at the University of California, Berkeley, spanning bacterial pathogenesis and high-containment studies of host immunity.

Helia holds a master’s degree in International Science and Technology Policy from George Washington University and a bachelor’s degree in Microbial Biology from the University of California, Berkeley.